BLACK SABBATH Presented With 'Double Gold Disc Award' For Canadian Sales Of '13'

Prior to their concert last night (Wednesday, August 14) at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, BLACK SABBATH members Ozzy Osbourne, (vocals),Geezer Butler (bass) and Tony Iommi (guitar) were presented with a "double gold disc award" for their new album, "13". A photo taken at the presentation ceremony can be seen below (courtesy of Butler's Facebook page).

"13", the first BLACK SABBATH record in 35 years to feature Ozzy, Iommi and Butler all playing together, entered the official U.K. chart at position No. 1. The CD sold 13,000 copies more than the No. 2 entry, "BE" by Liam Gallagher's BEADY EYE.

The last time SABBATH topped the chart in the U.K. was nearly 43 years ago — in October 1970 — with the band's second LP, "Paranoid".

"13" debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart in June, the first SABBATH album to ever top the U.S. chart. The CD has sold 290,000 copies in the United States so far, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Osbourne came up with the title for "God Is Dead?", the current single from "13", but bassist Geezer Butler wanted to call it something else. Ozzy told Shortlist, "I was in a doctor's office and there was a magazine in there with that line on the cover. I thought, 'Yeah — people flew planes into the World Trade Center because of God, there's all this fucking shiy going on in the world in the name of God.'" Geezer added, "Ozzy gave me that line, and I wrote the lyrics. I wanted to call the song 'American Jihad'."

Ozzy continued, "Fuck that. I'm the guy at the front singing it; I would have had a fucking army after me . . . In the early days (of BLACK SABBATH),there was a lot of backlash from religious groups . . . I was sent letters written in blood. In my house I must have 25 fucking Bibles, each with a marked-up passage that (the sender) wanted me to read."

Geezer Butler told The Pulse Of Radio what the song was about. "It's about this guy that sets out to prove that God is still alive, and he has this voice in his head saying that God's dead, and he can't get rid of the voice telling him, so he goes out and kills everybody," he said.